Princess Anne is currently being hospitalized for horse-related head injuries and a concussion. While Buckingham Palace is downplaying Anne’s situation, it definitely sounds pretty serious, especially the concussion. As I covered earlier, Anne’s staff canceled all of her events for the week and it was a huge list of events crisscrossing the UK, plus she was supposed to fly to Canada and now that’s not happening either. That’s just her schedule for ONE WEEK. Anne has always been one of the most hard-working royals, so her absence is definitely part of a larger conversation about “working royals” and “the slimmed-down monarchy.” The Princess of Wales and King Charles are both receiving cancer treatments and Queen Camilla and Prince William are both work-shy, let’s say that. Sophie and Edward are both healthy, but literally no one is checking for them. Well, Anne’s hospitalization has led to yet another larger conversation about how the Windsors are in dire straits. Some the Daily Beast:
Some insiders believe that King Charles has only himself to blame for the latest staffing crisis.
“Plenty of people, including Anne, have been saying the royals have been spread too thinly,” said one royal insider, “This is not a new thing. Prince Andrew did his Newsnight interview [about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, that led to his exit from royal duties] in 2019. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left their senior royal duties in 2020. Of course no one could have expected Kate to get so sick, but you hardly had to be a fortune teller back then to see that Charles, Camilla and Anne [Charles is 75, Camilla is 76 and Anne is 73] were all getting older and therefore going to have to do less. Charles should have brought Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie [Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters] back. They have both made it very clear they would be willing to help, but he doesn’t like admitting mistakes.”
A friend of Charles’ however said that characterization was unfair. “Charles decided to reduce the number of working royals because he could see that the days of having dozens of minor relatives living off the family are over. No European royal family is expanding their numbers. Anne’s hospitalization has got absolutely nothing to do with it. The palace have said it is a minor thing and I am sure she will be back very soon.”
The bestselling royal biographer of the king, Christopher Andersen, told The Daily Beast: “The Princess Royal is 73, and, like her brother Charles obviously more vulnerable physically. Still, what is being described as a mild concussion is nothing new for Anne, or for Charles, for that matter. They have both been riding since early childhood and sustained all sorts of injuries in the process. Charles was ferociously competitive on the polo field, and Anne competed in equestrian events in the 1976 Olympics. Before foxhunting was banned in 2004, Charles and Anne both loved to ride to the hounds. All manner of bruises, fractures, sprains, dislocations, and concussions go with territory.”
What makes this different, Andersen said, was that Charles could scarcely afford to lose even one working member of the royal family—when he and Kate are battling cancer, and Harry and Andrew are out of the picture.
“As the senior royals get older, there will inevitably be more health challenges,” Andersen said. “But it does seem odd that we’re witnessing one medical problem after another being heaped on the new sovereign in rapid succession. One gets the sense that the royal family is on the ropes. I think we were all spoiled somewhat by the late Queen Mother, by Queen Elizabeth II, and by Prince Philip, all three of whom avoided serious illness well into their nineties.”
Looking to the future, Andersen noted William’s plans to further scale down the British monarchy, which could lead Charles to worry that, “once he is no longer in the picture, a King William V will take his plans for modernization several steps too far.”
“Charles decided to reduce the number of working royals because he could see that the days of having dozens of minor relatives living off the family are over. No European royal family is expanding their numbers…” The difference, I feel, is that most of the European monarchies have charismatic, prepared and capable heirs waiting in the wings and that’s not the case in Britain. There’s a reason why the British media is still so obsessed with the Sussexes, you know? The Sussexes are not just more attractive and interesting – it turns out that the whole thing hinged on them and the Windsors only realized it after the Sussexes were gone. Anyway, as I said on Twitter, I have no particular smoke for Anne, but watching this larger story play out is endlessly fascinating to me. The left-behind Windsors are being hoisted by their own petard.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.